30. March 2020

New Music Monday #2

Our second New Music Monday contains two live recordings with pieces by composer Bernd ThewesWÜNSCHEprojektion / … im Jenseits and WUNSCHMASCHINE (2nd version), played by Marco Blaauw, Benjamin Kobler and Dirk Rothbrust.
>>> link to download

In January 2013 Dirk Rothbrust dedicated Bernd Thewes his Monday concert “Wünsche” (Wishes) where both recordings were made. Here Dirk Rothbrust reports on a long-standing connection and why Bernd Thewes is not completely innocent of his passion for contemporary music:

“A long friendship connects me with the composer Bernd Thewes that goes back to my school days.
In one of my first bands I played in at the age of 13, “Dreiklang” a (9-person jazz rock punk new music conglomerate), Bernd was the keyboarder. He, then already over 18 (!), studied composition in Saarbrücken and musicology in Mainz. I was very impressed that he commuted with his car between these two cities and read Adorno while driving, book on the steering wheel. Inside his car you couldn’t see the floor, the 3 pedals protruding from mountains of empty cans, bags, notes, clothes and other found and lost objects.
The drawing of the instrument setup of WUNSCHMASCHINE  (Wishing Machine) somehow reminds me of this …

Bernd had a big part in my first experience with new music:
With the “Blasorchester Illingen”, which was hostilely taken over and instantly manned by some musicians from my home region, and which was then also conducted by Bernd, we performed numerous works from Kagel, Cage, Rihm, Schönberg and Thewes, to the great astonishment of the local wind orchestra audience.
Even later I have performed many of his works with mixed instrumentation, including 4 percussion quartets, duos with violin, or even numerous solo works he wrote for me. The piece WUNSCHMASCHINE (Wishing Machine) is crammed with musical, technical and theatrical ideas (and wishes), it took me 4 or 5 practice runs (and concert dates) until I could finally get it running in this Monday concert”.

Dirk Rothbrust, 2020